nature, nurture

As a native, I am most familiar with the heliocentrism of the American South and its oppressive, subtropical summer. Each season before or after feels like a short lived prelude or epilogue to the main event: the elastic period of May through September in which the relentless sun heats the atmosphere into an aerosol swimming pool. The summers are both nature and nurture. Their agricultural implications have given roundabout way to the South’s most infamous social and political reputations. Of course, there is no feedback loop between Southern culture and its weather which may elicit more or less of its signature occlusive humidity. And yet, one can’t help but think that the place and weather are in some sort of preternatural symbiosis; that if the region’s history and people were to fade away, so too might its dog days of August.

The absence of this was, in part, what I found to be somewhat jarring about Northern California when I moved there in 2016. Palo Alto’s seasons are a kind of gentle rocking chair between warmer and cooler, bound by impossibly cloudless blue skies and the dependable whisper of crisp Pacific breeze. The winter, occasionally struck by the hispanically named climate pattern from the east which I can never keep straight, can be quite wet; but even the rainiest days of January on the San Francisco peninsula seem bound by the temperance and passivity so stereotypical of the region. As a southerner, I found this climatic routine somewhat hollow, or exhausting, even, in its relentless pleasantries for the majority of the year. Ambitious 18 year olds flock to Stanford in no small part for its agreeable climate, only to use its pleasures as a sun-kissed cloak for their unshakable neuroses.

New York is entirely different. New York City rotates on the axis of its seasons. The weather forecast here is a flyer of sheet music; it prescribes the tempo and melody of the city’s life. The four-season year is a John Williams film score, each season its own act, stitched together with playful transitions and an unmistakable sound. The doldrums of frigid city winters delicately rise into the spritely optimism of spring as the blackened snow melts and tulips emerge in the medians of Park Avenue. Spring is distinct but fleeting. Then, of course, summer in the city cannot help but feel like the main event. I remember once sitting at a second story bar, having a martini on the first gorgeous Friday evening in May, overlooking a West Village street. The people below seemed like ants, the seductive summer weather having stomped on their ant hill, as they fled their various urban refuges to claim a first taste of the warm, humid air. Where did all of these people come from? It almost seemed impractical that, during the shortest gray days of February, each one was here, somewhere, above, below, and around, living their own lives and having their own triumph, anguish, sadness, and joy.

Around September, the Summer slows into the nostalgia of Fall, dotted with the upbeat chords of the holidays. I find Fall in New York so enjoyable because it is an effortless decrescendo from the summer’s dopaminergic frenzy. It feels contemplative, measured, and justified. The winter which follows, those frigid doldrums, never fail to make their return. Those months are universally loathed, save for some who I suppose find austere pleasure in their dark mornings and biting winds, thankful to have an unfailing personal excuse to stay inside. I couldn’t possibly go out in this cold.

And on that axis the greatest city in the world continues to turn, its Four-Act-Symphony stuck on repeat. It is only fitting that a city with such social, cultural, and economic range will embody every point on the meteorological spectrum over the course of 365 days. Just as the South is thick with its inescapable summer air, New York is one with its seasons, the city ebbing and flowing as the temperature turns.

When I was younger, and more religiously engaged, I often heard people at church speak of life’s seasons. As with many other tangentially religious sentiments or truisms, one need not engage with a God or lack thereof to appreciate them, and savor a kernel of shared existential emotion on which so much of religious practice is actually built. But I was too young to know, really, what such seasons meant. The rhythms of our seasonal existence, both gentle and firm, are difficult to grasp at thirteen.

It is nearly the end of winter here in the city, a punishing string of months in which our avenues turn into arctic air autobahns and evening commutes reside in the premature void of darkness. This winter was particularly cold. And yet, for this winter, and all winters, I am grateful – for only through the trials of its unwelcoming chill are we to feel the explosive joy of Spring’s first day. Only with the steady seasonal crescendo are we so eager to savor the fleeting summer, welcoming May’s first sweltering Saturday dusk, before ungraciously wishing the heat away when August gives way to September.

There is much beauty, physical and otherwise, to be found in New York City, but its seasonal symphony is almost sublime. It has impressed upon me the richness of range, and resilience, and patience for what is to come. The city has taught me that there is complicated beauty in every day – and that, just as with the seasons of our lives, each transition is to be celebrated, as it heralds the passage of one for which we must be grateful, and the uncorrupted anticipation for what may be to come.

And so, as the city’s maestro waves her wand, and winter thaws to Spring, we brace for the sultry pleasures of an urban summer, knowing with contented relief that, someday soon, the trees will be bare once more.